The human mind appears suddenly and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable void. It passes half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep. Even when awake it is a victim of its own ill-adjustment, of disease, of age, of external suggestion, of nature's compulsions; it doubts its own sensations and trusts only in instruments and averages.

Why do they put the Gideon Bibles only in the bedrooms, where it's usually too late...?

Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error.

The plural of spouse is spice.

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.

The greatest poem ever known Is one all poets have outgrown: The poetry, innate, untold, Of being only four years old.

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.